Paris(but not only)  Personal Tours

The Ardeche Canyon is a 19-mile-long river canyon located only 50 miles North of Avignon. Its two main drawbacks are that it's a bit far from Saint-Raphaël (180 miles) and that it's too crowded in July and August. But if we decided to spend a day there, on the way to Saint-Raphaël or on the way back, we could:


1) take a beautiful road-trip on its rim.


2) do some rather sporty canoeing. The difference here with the Verdon Canyon is that we don't come back where we started from: we decide in advance the length we want to achieve (5 miles = 1h30, 8 miles = 4 hours, 15 miles = 7 hours or 20 miles in 9 hours) and, when we get there, a shuttle-bus brings us back to where we parked the car. Now, I'm getting a bit old for the last two options (plus it would take too much of our time), but we could easily spend a half-day doing option 1 or 2 (with a preference for the 4 hour trip because we get to do the slides!) and that would leave us time to do one of the caves below in the afternoon (we can do the other one in the morning on our way out).


3) Visit the Chauvet cave which is nothing less than the oldest art gallery ever recorded! 36,000 years old!

We won't be able to visit the actual Chauvet cave (not open to the public) but we could visit its exact replica, the Caverne du Pont-d'Arc which was built next door, inaugurated in 2015 and which was a challenge to build as they recreated everything: the volumes, the rocks, the paintings, the temperature, the humidity, even the smells!


4) and while we're there (and we're into caves), we could visit another cave, this time the real spot, where nature alone takes center stage.  Here, the art consists of limestone concretions created over thousands of years.


Let me tell you that if you have young kids or teenagers with you, they will love this part of the trip! Just saying...

Ardeche Canyon